The new thing is: Let’s run 6.5 miles in a race next month! Sigh.

As I keep telling people, 6.5 miles is a lot of running for a fat girl. At this point, everyone makes nice high eye contact and proclaims, “Preposterous! I’ve never heard such a ridiculous description of a human body in all my life!” Ugh, no, we’re not having the “Am I rilly beautiful talk?” now; we’re having the “bodies moving through space at a certain rate for a particular distance” conversation. We’re having the “I’m going to die alone in the woods during this race!” conversation.

I did used to run, about 6-7 years ago, for a brief while that I recall fondly as the year when I vomited every day. Some things I got better at, like breathing and getting my guts to hold themselves together. One month I ran 127 miles. But back then, let’s remember, I was 25 and the neurons in my brain hadn’t fully mylenated. Once they did, I realized that all I talked about was running, all I thought about was running, and I was in an unspoken contest with the bulimic girl downstairs for who could spend more time per day puking. I didn’t want to live that way anymore.

So the puking: It turns out I don’t really experience pain in the normal way. I don’t know what the normal way is supposed to be, but it tells people, in a sane and predictable manner, that they’ve gone too far, right? No matter what happens to me, from tapping a table too hard to the day after oral surgery, pain is like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! oh no! ah! If I cut myself, I have no idea until I inspect the wound whether I’ve barely scraped the skin or sawed almost down to the bone. It’s just aaaaaaaah! oh no! either way.

When I run, it feels the same if I’m going slowly or quickly, short or far. I went for the first run in years a few weeks ago, and zipped through the first mile in a time that I still scarcely believe, it’s so fast. I was excited to do so well and thought about doing another, having stopped, and I realized my internal organs were about to leak out of my bodily cavities, having been pulverized by unaccustomed jostling. I was in horrible pain. I limped home, defeated by my own stupidity, and barely managed to draw a hot bath to pass out in. Never again, I thought.

This time, however, I’m running with some other people, who are good at keeping a slower pace and not being overly ambitious. When I’m running with them, I feel as if they’re killing me, making me do this bullshit that I don’t want to do, and fine, Jesus Christ, we’ll take a right up the hill assholes. But they’re saving me from myself, so I don’t get bored and tear off for home, only to barf on the threshold.

We’ll see if I make it up to 6.5 miles by a month from tomorrow. If you don’t hear from me soon after, you’ll know that I was the one the wolves decided was the easiest pickings.

Of course, my sentiments are not terribly controversial here in Great Whatsit company, but I live in Wisconsin, where people occasionally paint their homes in Green Bay Packer gold and green, and with a Vikings devotee who has been known to dress our dog in a purple jersey on game days. Every Sunday in the fall is like the Civil War around here.

I just don’t get it. First of all, WHY? Sports are grossly overrated spectacles that give ordinary people permission to act like idiots. “Fandom” lets people identify with and celebrate achievements they have no actual part in and feel pointless rivalries with people they don’t even know.

Some of it does look like fun. If you drive past Miller Park on a summer afternoon, you will probably see thousands upon thousands of Brewers fans tailgating in the parking lot. The smell of grilling burgers fills the air over the freeway, tempting me to pull over and join in the festivities. When your team and your ballpark are both named after beer, drinking a cold one outdoors in public is practically a birthright! Hey, can’t we just hang out here and skip the baseball part altogether?

That’s why these few weeks in July when I turn into an obsessive sports junkie are so strange. I watch the broadcasts for hours every day. The athletes’ online musings and comments to the press become engrossing. The teams⎯their interpersonal chemistry, their coaches, their statistics, even their colors⎯are sources of endless fascination. Here I am, jumping up and down in my living room, yelling at the TV, cheering on my favorites.

That’s right, folks⎯the Tour de France is on.

Pro cycling doesn’t have much of a presence in this country, at least not compared to Europe, and especially now that Lance Armstrong has retired. Still, the whole shebang, every stage, is broadcast live. The TDF goes on for about three weeks. The route changes every year. Here’s this year’s route:

The riders go about a hundred miles every day. Out of the two hundred or so who begin the race, dozens will not finish. They crash out, get sick, or fail to meet the time cutoffs. Over two thousand miles of racing, and the whole thing comes down to mere seconds’ advantage for the winner.

One of the reasons the Tour is so great is that it really comprises several different contests. Many riders specialize in different events, but the only way to win is to be strong in all of them. Some stages end in sprints, where each team works hard to bring a rider to the front for the last couple hundred meters. These are exhilarating.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Other days are mountain stages, which test the riders’ ability to ascend insane climbs, jockeying for position in the Pyrenees and Alps, before descending at speeds just as insane (60-70 MPH).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sometimes, it all comes down to a time trial, which is simply the rider battering himself against the clock.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another reason is the breathtaking scenery, from the mountains to the Mediterranean coast. (For the love of God, please turn down your computer’s volume if you watch this next clip, or your ears will bleed.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

This great scenic clip includes Jens Voigt literally breaking his face in a crash⎯not for the faint of heart.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Finally, the best reason is the riders themselves. They are supremely badass, with so much of the soul that I find lacking in other pro sports. My favorite is Thor Hushovd, a Norwegian who is the current world champion. He wore the leader’s yellow jersey for the first week of this year’s Tour and is basically a perfect human specimen.

One of the best time trialists in the world is the Swiss national champion, Fabian Cancellara. He is another demigod.

Some think Mark Cavendish (right, with Hushovd) is the greatest sprinter who has ever lived. He is from the Isle of Man and they call him the “Manx Missile.” He’s kind of a dick about how great he is, but then again, he is the best.

A longtime favorite of mine is Australian Cadel Evans, a genuinely sweet guy who was a teenage mountain bike prodigy before turning to road racing. This year he may take it all.

Maybe one of the biggest rivalries in the sport right now is Frank and Andy Schleck versus Alberto Contador. The Luxembourgian Schleck brothers are equally tall, skinny, super-strong, and awesome. They ride on the same team and one supports whichever of them is greater on any given day.

Spaniard Alberto Contador is a jerk, plays a little bit dirty, is currently under investigation for doping, and is famous for saying last year, “”My relationship with [teammate!] Lance Armstrong is zero….He’s a great rider and he did a great Tour. Another thing is on a personal level, where I have never admired him and never will.” Nice.

If you catch only one stage of the Tour this year, make it the Alpe d’Huez this Friday. The Alpe d’Huez breaks hearts and crushes the best of men. It’s beautiful and terrible.

Loving the Tour so much makes me a hypocrite, it’s true. After Sunday’s Paris finish, it’s all over and I will go back to hating pro sports and their fans…until next July.

Here is a typical cornhole set:

If you are industrious, you can paint your cornhole set in creative ways:

Here is a primer on how to play, courtesy of some dudes named Derek and Dan:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is an old lady nailing a shot:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And here is a fabulous song about Cornhole, from Rhett and Link:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, cornhole on, cornholers! Play it proud.

Ever since I was little, I liked to play hard and get dirty on the field.

I still love it now.

Oh, don’t worry – I’m not going to stop playing softball. It’s too much fun. What I am going to stop doing forever, however, is this:

Because I did that in a game four weeks and two days ago, and my ankle ended up looking like this:

So, I’m done with all that, in hopes I’ll never have to use these for four weeks straight again:

That is all. Happy springtime, everyone! Let’s play safe out there.

This photo appeared in Friday’s LA Times, and I’m sure in several other papers across the country. The accompanying story is about former NHL player Bob Probert, who recently died of heart failure.  The article doesn’t have as much to do with his death as it does about what was found afterwards. Mr. Probert’s post-mortem brain shows signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease that more commonly affects former boxers.

This announcement is troubling, but apparently, not a huge surprise; more and more retired athletes (primarily football and hockey players) are receiving this diagnosis.

Saddest to me, and what the story doesn’t touch upon, is the way the lure of careers in professional sports drive (mostly) boys and young men to damage their bodies in different ways.  And how they’re encouraged by coaches to “walk off” any number of injuries, from twisted ankles to concussions.  At 15, I was even told to walk off what wound up being torn ligaments and cartilage in my knee.

So why would we send young people into the arms of these demon taskmasters to suffer the perils described above? I’d suggest that because there’s physical exercise and “life lessons” involved, we’ve collectively assumed that organized sports are inherently good for kids. And as the media perpetually reminds us, every child is about a heartbeat away from becoming a strung-out, zombie gang member who has complete disregard for his own or any other life.  Given this choice, staying after school and practicing for whatever team seems very much like god’s gift of salvation.

I recently had a conversation with a professional football trainer who shared with me his understanding of the likely financial and physical ruin that awaits even successful players.  According to him, all those young and healthy linemen that you see beating each other up on Sunday won’t be able to walk, use their hands, or raise their arms above shoulder lever by the time they are 45.  And to make matters much worse, players’ NFL health insurance runs out (I believe he told me) 5 years after retirement — hence the financial ruin part of the equation.

The stories that the trainer told reminded me of the flack that Rasheed Wallace caught from NBA executives and the press when he equated being a professional basketball player with being a slave. I know that it’s difficult to feel sympathy for millionaire athletes like ‘Sheed. But the reality is that the vast majority of people who make it to the pros, regardless of the sport, only last a few years, and wind up making much less money than we might imagine — the league minimum for NFL players last year was $350,000.00, and the average pay was about $788,000.00.  That’s not a lot if you consider that the player who earns this has likely given up a college degree, and played for only 3 or 4 years before facing an uncertain future, likely with few marketable skills and possibly no health insurance.  And to this, we might consider adding the great possibility of depression that comes with the loss of lifelong dreams — imagine the intensity of spending every part of your being in pursuit of one single thing, and that thing being taken away from you.

But parents and children still buy into the myth that a pro contract is a one-way ticket to an instantly glamourous lifestyle.  Except for the extreme minority, it isn’t — I’m not sure of the odds, but I imagine that the likelihood of becoming a millionaire athlete must be similar to the likelihood of winning some mega-million-dollar lottery. The problem, of course,  is that there are really, really rich people who become even more wealthy by selling this dream to starry-eyed parents and children.

What further bewilders me about professional sports, and what this post was originally going to be about is that, to my knowledge, professional athletics is the only career in which one can bloody a coworker without going to jail.  Isn’t this totally bizarre?  Have any of you ever heard anyone talk about how weird this is?  I know I haven’t. Other than when spectators are involved have any of you ever heard of an athlete being arrested for an on-the-field/ice/court brawl?

A more interesting question might be, why do people in the sports industrial complex celebrate on-the-field violence?  Or, why don’t the cameras stop shooting, as they do when fans misbehave? (The accepted norm of sports broadcasting is that when a fan jumps onto the field or otherwise draws attention to him- or herself, the cameras stop shooting as a way of not encouraging such behaviors.)

The answer is that players getting away with misconduct that would be jailable offenses for the rest of us, is one of the sports dream’s most alluring messages: professional athletes live in a special realm — a never-never land where children don’t have to grow up. To be a professional athlete is to live outside of the norms and laws that the rest of us must obey.

And this reality highlights the hypocritical tightrope that team owners walk: making a sport appeal to family viewers, while still understanding and perpetuating the violence that is inherent (and profitable) in professional sports. So players get fines for fighting, and league higher-ups go public with their condemnation of violence, but they are clearly disingenuous in their criticisms. If they were serious, wouldn’t they encourage legislation that would have players arrested for attacking one another?  Wouldn’t violent players at least be barred from league play?

These are obviously rhetorical questions. We all know the answer; it is spelled M-O-N-E-Y.

…for more on this subject, this article was published in yesterday’s NY Times.